Federal panel critical of base-closing plan

BRAC

Posted: Saturday, September 10, 2005

By Liz SidotiAssociated Press

WASHINGTON - A federal commission approved all but 14 percent of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's recommendations for closing or consolidating U.S. military bases - but it also took issue with the Pentagon in a final report sent to President Bush.

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The nine-member panel said the Defense Department overestimated savings by $30 billion and that some of the proposals for streamlining the Army, Navy and Air Force might have made the services less efficient.

Also, the commission questioned whether the restructuring should have been postponed until a major review of the national defense strategy was finished.

And the commission said it was hampered by what it called a failure of the Defense and Homeland Security departments to coordinate and define where homeland defense ends and homeland security begins.

"A gray area of overlap between these two distinct but related spheres of authority and responsibility persists despite four years' having elapsed since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks," the report chided.

The base-closing process "could have been a prime opportunity to shrink this gray and inherently nebulous boundary" had the two departments coordinated on the base-closing plan, the commission said.

The president now must decide whether to accept the panel's plan. Last month, Bush, using the commission's nickname, said, "In order for the process to be nonpolitical, it's very important to make it clear that the decision of BRAC will stand, as far as I am concerned."

Bush could reject the report altogether or send it back to the commission for more changes.

The Navy Supply Corps School in Athens is included on the list of recommended base closings.

Overall, the commission signed off on roughly 86 percent of what Rumsfeld recommended. That's on par with previous years, when commissions changed only about 15 percent of what the Pentagon proposed.